Learning choreography without thinking is dangerous. You don’t get the chance to really review yourself and further develop your own style. Perhaps for those choreography-only dancers, one’s own style is not what they want.
With such strong demand of choreography, bringing back from other masters overseas is not enough. DVD becomes another major source for choreography, and now it is Youtube. Nevertheless, visual imitation is easy and knowing the kinetic operation is another. It would take people away from the real dance and what we have is such boring and unlike duplication.
Some local instructors also do their own choreography pieces, or what they think that is THE CHOREOGRAPHY. Choreography is a very professional art and requires certain experiences and talent. As Suhaila said in her workshop at Taipei this April, choreographers often have different way to listen to the music and observe this world than others. That’s why we have very few outstanding choreographers and a great deal of excellent dancers out there. Many just cannot tell the difference between combos/drills and true choreography.
Still another issue from the heavily-choreography-oriented phenomenon is that people have strange idea toward improvisation. I was told by one teacher at class that improvisation is all about dancing without preparation and thinking. You put a piece of song for show and you just dance to it.
People like me who don’t really get into choreography things naturally go for improvisation dancing like ATS. It provides me great freedom and helps me get rid of the fear that I might not remember the choreography correctly that if I dance with my friends on stage, I might make myself looks like a fool. I felt a sense of security not to dance someone else’s choreography. However, once you begin to learn how to improvisation, you realize there is more to learn in advanced so you have capacity to do improvisation.
As my dear mentor Carolena Nericcio once said, a really great improvisation should be like choreography while the perfect choreography should look like improvisation. Now when I have chance to learn choreography, I will focus on how those movements are put together in order to response the music, or how floor pattern is set to present fluid musicality. I found out that I have more to learn through a choreography piece now rather than just to force myself memorizing everything movements and steps in this piece. It becomes more instructional and yet, more fun.
With such strong demand of choreography, bringing back from other masters overseas is not enough. DVD becomes another major source for choreography, and now it is Youtube. Nevertheless, visual imitation is easy and knowing the kinetic operation is another. It would take people away from the real dance and what we have is such boring and unlike duplication.
Some local instructors also do their own choreography pieces, or what they think that is THE CHOREOGRAPHY. Choreography is a very professional art and requires certain experiences and talent. As Suhaila said in her workshop at Taipei this April, choreographers often have different way to listen to the music and observe this world than others. That’s why we have very few outstanding choreographers and a great deal of excellent dancers out there. Many just cannot tell the difference between combos/drills and true choreography.
Still another issue from the heavily-choreography-oriented phenomenon is that people have strange idea toward improvisation. I was told by one teacher at class that improvisation is all about dancing without preparation and thinking. You put a piece of song for show and you just dance to it.
People like me who don’t really get into choreography things naturally go for improvisation dancing like ATS. It provides me great freedom and helps me get rid of the fear that I might not remember the choreography correctly that if I dance with my friends on stage, I might make myself looks like a fool. I felt a sense of security not to dance someone else’s choreography. However, once you begin to learn how to improvisation, you realize there is more to learn in advanced so you have capacity to do improvisation.
As my dear mentor Carolena Nericcio once said, a really great improvisation should be like choreography while the perfect choreography should look like improvisation. Now when I have chance to learn choreography, I will focus on how those movements are put together in order to response the music, or how floor pattern is set to present fluid musicality. I found out that I have more to learn through a choreography piece now rather than just to force myself memorizing everything movements and steps in this piece. It becomes more instructional and yet, more fun.
Recently I had chance to dance Suhaila’s choreography with my dance friends in another dancer’s party. For the first time, I realize that in addition to body movements, transitions, and stage presence, there is something more for dancing a choreography piece – the emotion or something like that. Perfectly executing all movements in a dance is great and to really give self-expression through this choreography is something else, a much better reward.
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